A Simple Act of Violence

by R.J. Ellory

  ‘Yes,’ Miller blurted. ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine . . . just tired.’

  Robey nodded understandingly. He stepped back to allow Miller past, and then walked with him to the front door of the apartment. He opened it, and before he stood aside to allow Miller out, he turned and said, ‘Perhaps we will talk again, Detective Miller. I, for one, have enjoyed your company.’

  Miller extended his hand and they shook.

  ‘I’m sorry I could not have been of more help to you.’

  ‘It was at least interesting,’ Miller said. ‘Goodnight.’ He stepped past Robey and out into the exterior walkway.

  ‘Have a safe journey, detective,’ Robey said, and closed the door behind him.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  En route to Pierce Street Miller found it hard to concentrate.

  He had forgotten to ask Robey how he knew Sarah Bishop’s trainer; to question him again regarding the afternoon of Saturday the 11th.

  Tomorrow morning he would face Lassiter and Nanci Cohen, and what would he be able to tell them?

  That he had stolen a hairbrush from Robey’s apartment?

  At one point he pulled over to the side of the road. He opened the window and took deep breaths. A rush of nausea left his body damp with sweat.

  After ten or fifteen minutes he wound up the window, started the engine, drove on toward Pierce.

  Marilyn Hemmings was just leaving. ‘A late one?’ she asked.

  Miller took the handkerchief from his inside jacket pocket and opened it up for her.

  ‘Whose is this?’ she asked.

  Miller shook his head.

  ‘You don’t know or you’re not going to tell me?’

  ‘The latter.’

  ‘So you do know?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And do they know you have it?’

  ‘I figure they will soon enough.’

  ‘And what do you want me to do with it?’

  ‘Can you take prints off of it?’

  Hemmings looked at Miller, her expression one of concern, and then she took the hairbrush carefully by the bristles and turned the handle toward the light.

  ‘There’s some things I can look at here,’ she said. ‘This is from a suspect we don’t have on file, right?’

  ‘We don’t know whether he’s on file or not. We don’t have any prints for AFIS if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘But now you’re hoping we do.’ She hesitated for a moment. ‘I do this then I’m an accomplice to whatever it was you did, you understand that?’

  Miller nodded.

  ‘So answer me this question . . . what makes you think that I’m gonna do what you want?’

  ‘Nothing. I don’t know that you are going to do it. I just figured that you might.’

  ‘You ever do something like this before?’

  ‘No, never before.’

  ‘This is on the Ribbon Killer guy?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  ‘This conversation didn’t take place, you understand that?’

  ‘I understand.’

  ‘Call me in the morning, maybe ten, eleven o’ clock. I’ll see what we have.’

  ‘I really appreciate—’

  Hemmings did not smile. She shook her head. ‘Go,’ she said coldly. ‘Get out of here. You didn’t come here tonight. I didn’t see you. Like I said, this conversation never happened. ’

  ‘I owe you.’

  ‘For what, Detective Miller? I didn’t do anything.’

  Miller nodded. He turned and started walking. There was a line somewhere. He’d walked over it. It did not feel good.

  An hour later, sitting at his computer, he typed ‘CIA Drugs’ into a search engine. He was offered thousands of pages to visit. He opened up a site and scanned what was before him:Operation Snow Cone. Operation Watch Tower. Secret beacons stationed at remote locations between Colombia and Panama to assist CIA drug pilots flying from America to Panama at near-sea level without being detected by U.S. drug interdiction aircraft. Destination was Albrook Army Airfield in Panama. Operation Buy Back, using CIA-FRONT organization Pacific Seafood Company. Drugs are packed into shrimp containers and shipped to various points in the U.S. A joint CIA-DEA operation. Operations Short Field, Burma Road, Morning Gold, Backlash, Indigo Sky and Triangle. Information provided by CIA and Office of Naval Intelligence operatives Trenton Parker, Gunther Russbacher, Michael Maholy and Robert Hunt. Recommended reading: Rodney Stich’s seminal work ‘Defrauding America’. Estimated profits from the CIA’s combined marijuana and cocaine smuggling operations sits between ten and fifteen billion U.S. dollars.

  Miller closed down the files, typed in ‘Nicaragua Oliver North Cocaine Smuggling.’

  It was as if a different world had opened up before him, a world he had never questioned, never considered. Page after page of testimonials and documents were right there before him. He chose one at random, read through it with ever-increasing unease:On Feb 10th, 1986, Lt. Colonel Oliver North was informed that a plane being used to run materials to the Contras was previously used to run drugs, and that the CIA had chosen a company whose officials had known criminal records. The company, Vortex Aviation, was run by a man named Michael Palmer, one of the biggest marijuana smugglers in U.S. history, who was under indictment for 10 years of trafficking in Detroit at the same time that he was receiving $300,000 in U.S. funds from a State Department contract to ferry ‘humanitarian’ aid to the Contras. Simultaneously, DIACSA, a Miami-based company used to launder Oliver North’s arranged funding for the Contras, was run by Alfredo Caballero, a business associate of Floyd Carlton, a pilot who flew cocaine for Panama’s General Manuel Noriega. Carlton ultimately testified against Noriega at his trial.

  And another:On Nov. 26th, 1996, Eden Pastora, an ex-Contra leader, stated before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee: ‘When this whole business of drug trafficking came out in the open in the Contras, the CIA gave a document to Cesar, Popo Chamorro, Marcos Aguado and me . . . they said this is a document holding us harmless, without any responsibility, for having worked in the U.S. security . . .’

  Miller closed the files. He shut the computer down. His eyes were gritty, his head pounded. He was hungry but could not consider eating. He did not want to know what had been done. He did not want to see the sacred monster.

  Robert Miller just wanted to sleep, but he knew he would not.

  THIRTY-NINE

  Nanci Cohen looked at her watch for the third time in five minutes. ‘You have me only for a matter of minutes,’ she said abruptly.

  It was a little before ten, morning of Friday the 17th.

  Roth sat to Miller’s right, Lassiter to the left beside ADA Cohen.

  ‘So he let me in,’ Miller said.

  ‘And he told you what?’

  ‘He told me nothing,’ Miller said.

  Nanci Cohen frowned. She reached into her voluminous bag for a notepad and a pen. ‘He told you nothing? How can he have told you nothing?’

  ‘I don’t mean that he told me nothing, he just told me a lot of stuff that I haven’t figured out the precise relevancy of yet.’

  ‘So?’ she asked. ‘What did he tell you?’

  ‘About cocaine.’

  ‘Cocaine?’

  ‘About cocaine smuggling in Nicaragua.’

  Roth turned suddenly. ‘The newspaper clipping beneath her bed.’

  ‘The what?’ ADA Cohen asked, and then she nodded her head and smiled. ‘Beneath the Sheridan woman’s bed, right? He left a newspaper clipping there about the Nicaraguan election.’

  ‘And this guy talked to you about Nicaragua?’ Lassiter asked.

  Miller nodded.

  ‘He’s fucking playing with us, isn’t he?’ Nanci Cohen said. There was a wry smile in her tone. ‘He’s playing with us. He’s teasing us. I mean, tell me the odds, for God’s sake. We find a newspaper clipping about the Nicaraguan election beneath Catherine Sheridan’s bed, and you go over to see the guy and he just happens to end up talking to
you about Nicaragua.’

  ‘He was making a point,’ Miller said.

  ‘You’re telling me that this was a coincidence?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know what it was . . . it left me disturbed to say the least.’

  ‘What did? He did?’

  ‘No, not him. What he said. About coke smuggling in Nicaragua . . .’

  ‘You mean Ollie North and the CIA?’ Nanci asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Miller replied.

  ‘Old fucking news, amigo. You know Janet Reno?’

  ‘Sure I do.’

  ‘Right . . . well she is one very tough lady. Anyway, the Miami PD discovered that Contras were being trained in Florida, paid for with money from coke trafficking. Filed this huge report, I mean it was fucking huge, and they gave it all to the FBI. Had a stamp on every page that said “Record furnished to George Kosinsky, FBI”, the name of the agent they collaborated with. And yet despite this report Janet Reno, Chief Prosecutor for the State of Florida, saw no reason to investigate the matter further. You can’t tell me that a tough lady like that would be backed off by some coke dealer somewhere. She was told not to look into it. She was asked politely to turn the other way, you know what I mean? Like I said already, this is old news.’

  ‘Whatever it is, that’s what Robey talked about.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Lassiter said. ‘Who the fuck is this guy?’

  Nanci Cohen waved her hand at Lassiter and he fell silent.

  ‘So?’ she asked.

  ‘So I don’t know how he fits into this,’ Miller said, ‘but still I can’t get away from the identities of these women . . . the fact that we have not been able to establish precise and factual histories for any of them.’

  ‘The black woman?’ Cohen asked.

  Miller shook his head. ‘I don’t think she was part of this guy’s agenda. She started talking to us. Maybe she knew something, maybe she didn’t . . . there’s a good possibility we’ll never know exactly how she and Darryl King were involved. Anyway, the mere fact that she was talking to us was reason enough for him to kill her. The first four . . . I think they are connected - and I think that Robey knows something. I think he’s involved. I have no idea if he’s the one who killed these women, but I am convinced he knows something and he’s trying to tell us what he knows without implicating himself.’

  ‘And the thing with Nicaragua?’ Nanci Cohen asked.

  Miller shrugged. ‘God knows.’

  ‘We’ve got two pointers . . . the newspaper clipping and this lecture you got last night, but it still doesn’t really give us anything. Not for a search warrant, and certainly nothing to justify an arrest.’

  ‘We have to follow up on these identities,’ Miller said.

  ‘Sure you do,’ Nanci Cohen said. ‘You need to do the work that should have been done back when the first one happened. Someone hit a brick wall and stopped. That was just plain lazy as far as I’m concerned.’

  Lassiter opened his mouth to speak.

  ‘Save it, Frank,’ Cohen said. ‘I get the picture. Not enough good people, not enough funding, overtime caps, the same shit we all run into. It happens, okay? I’m not criticizing anyone. I’m not pointing the finger at anyone. But now we have five dead women and we better get our act together before there’s another one.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I have to go. I don’t want to hit traffic.’

  At the door she looked back toward Miller. ‘You did good to get in there,’ she said, ‘but right now I’ve gotta figure out some reason to pull him in, something a little more substantial than wasting police time. Meanwhile, follow up on your IDs. And Frank?’

  Lassiter looked up at Nanci Cohen.

  ‘Call me when you have something I can do something with, okay?’

  Lassiter raised his hands in a conciliatory manner. He smiled and shook his head. ‘What d’you want me to do, Nanci?’

  ‘Hell, I don’t know, Frank . . . get something better.’

  And with that she was gone.

  Roth, Miller and Lassiter said nothing. Lassiter got up slowly. He walked to the door, and when he reached it he looked back at the two detectives.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said quietly. ‘Follow the IDs. Get something she can do something with, okay?’

  ‘Can we have more people?’ Miller asked. ‘Maybe Metz . . . Oliver too?’

  ‘You are the people I have,’ Lassiter replied. ‘Just you. I’ve got three other murders, a manslaughter, some gang of asshole joy riders terrorizing Gallery Place down in Chinatown. You want to know the truth? Catherine Sheridan was six days ago. She’s old news now. And Natasha Joyce? Hell, Natasha Joyce was some black woman down in the projects that no-one except us gives a damn about. I don’t know how to tell you this any better, but you are as good as it gets on this thing.’

  Lassiter shook his head resignedly and left the room.

  ‘Do me a favor,’ Miller said to Roth. ‘Get all the files we have, everything on all five victims, and bring them up here. I have to go run an errand. I shouldn’t be more than half an hour or so, okay?’

  Roth got up from his chair.

  Miller watched him go, and then he made his way quickly down the back stairs and out the rear of the building.

  FORTY

  Miller took an inconspicuous sedan from the car pool, told the pool chief he’d be back within the hour. He drove east toward Pierce, found Hemmings in her office and walked in without knocking.

  ‘I don’t know what you did but I don’t like it,’ Marilyn Hemmings said. ‘And I am very, very tempted to ask you precisely where this came from. If it came from where I think it came from . . .’ She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not asking, and I’m not making any assumptions. I already told myself that I wouldn’t ask you about this.’

  ‘So what is it?’ Miller asked.

  ‘The prints? God, I don’t even want to know what this is about, Robert. The prints came back flagged. I can’t tell you who they belong to.’

  ‘Flagged?’

  ‘Right. Flagged. You understand what that means?’

  ‘That whoever this is . . . that this person is . . .’

  ‘Is FBI or NSC or Internal Affairs or Department of Justice. God, any number of groups within the intelligence community. ’

  ‘DEA?’ Miller asked.

  ‘Defense Department, State Department, Department of the Interior, Office of Naval Intelligence . . . any one of them. You know the beat on this kind of thing. Whatever you’re looking at stops here, Robert. It stops dead in its tracks. I mean, what the—’ She stepped back and took a deep breath. She raised her hands like she was trying to placate Miller. ‘I don’t want to know where this came from, and I haven’t even told you the best bit.’

  ‘The best bit?’ Miller could already feel his pulse racing, could feel how his heart had quickened. Marilyn Hemmings looked scared and he felt for her - felt precisely the same thing. He remembered all too easily what Robey had said in the coffee shop, how it was Miller who had failed to appreciate the seriousness of the situation.

  ‘I put the print together from a number of partials, but there was another print on the handle, too little of it to ID. But there were hairs, long hairs, and I got to thinking that maybe the prints and the hairs weren’t from the same person. This was just a wild one, Robert, a real wild, out-on-the-edge thing, but I processed one of those hairs and I got DNA from the follicle, and I typed the DNA and made a comparison . . .’

  ‘And it belonged to someone on the system?’ Miller asked.

  ‘Catherine Sheridan.’

  Miller’s mouth opened like he was catching flies. ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘As serious as I ever was. I typed it twice just to be sure. The prints are not hers, but the hair is. I even have a physical match to compare it to. I have the woman in my freezer, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Miller said. ‘Jesus Christ almighty.’

  ‘So who is it, Robert? Tell me you didn’t get this hairbrush
from someone in the department.’

  Miller frowned. ‘Jesus no, Marilyn, don’t be crazy.’

  ‘It’s not someone we know? Someone we work with?’

  ‘God no, of course not. What the fuck do you think this was?’

  ‘I don’t know, Robert . . . what was I supposed to think? You bring me this thing on the quiet, I know there’s a problem with it . . . You lifted this from somewhere, right?’

  Miller shook his head. ‘I’m not saying anything, Marilyn. What you don’t know—’

  ‘Okay, okay . . . so you lifted this from somewhere and you bring it to me on the quiet, and you ask me to check it out and I find flagged prints, and hair belonging to our murder victim. What the hell am I supposed to think?’

  ‘Where’s the hairbrush now?’ Miller asked.

  ‘I have it in the evidence room.’

  ‘Get it for me,’ Miller said. ‘I have to put it back where it came from.’

  She laughed nervously. ‘You can’t be serious . . . no way! You’re not going to—’

  ‘What the hell do you expect me to do with it? Of course I’m going to put it back. It’s not staying here, and I’m not having it any nearer to you than it needs to be. Get it for me and I’ll be gone, okay?’

  Marilyn Hemmings paused for a moment or two, and then she hurried out of the room. She was back within moments, in her hand a blue evidence bag containing the brush. Miller rolled it up tight and put it in his jacket pocket.

  ‘So what do you have?’ Hemmings asked.

  Miller shook his head. ‘I have a liar. I have a man who says he knows nothing who evidently knows a hell of a lot more than he’s saying . . .’

  ‘Do I have to tell you to be careful?’

  Miller’s expression didn’t change.

  ‘I mean it, Robert. I want you to be careful. I don’t know what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into, but you’re too good to waste it all on one case.’